Absolutely Bananas: Seattle stay-at-home mom blog

In which I pretend that I didn’t go to a blogging conference

So where are you going again, exactly?” My mother-in-law looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

I shuffle my feet and mutter, “Erm, San Francisco.”

“Yes, and… for what was it, again?” 

Desperately I look around for a distraction.  CJ!  WHERE is CJ? 

And how is it that the child has an uncanny nack for interrupting EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION except this one?

“A blogging conference,” I finally stutter. 

“Oh.  Right.  A blogging conference.”

She doesn’t ask HOW MUCH this trip is costing exactly or WHEN I’m going to give it up and get a real job or WHY I haven’t considered cleaning the house once in a while rather than sitting at my computer. 

But the questions hover in the air between us, unspoken.

Or maybe I’m just imagining things.

When it comes to blogging, I’m pretty sure that most of my family thinks I’m crazy.  My friends aren’t sure what to make of me.  And the neighbors?  Well… we don’t tell the neighbors.

And when people ask me where I was this weekend?  I just tell them that I “met some friends” in San Francisco and leave it at that.  Because… they really don’t want to know. 

Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to tell them. 

So I’ve spent much of my time back in Seattle playing a little game that I like to call NOTHING HAPPENED and THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE.

Blogging Conference?  I don’t know nothing about no blogging conference.

I ain’t never heard a no BlogHer…

I was just lying low in the city by the bay.  All alone.  Without any DOOCE’s or Kawasakis or cheeseburgers.

And definitely without any BLOGGERS.

Carry on.

Honey, I’m HOME!

This post contains the big reveal to my earlier post. 

***

Seriously people, SPERM?  Eggs? Pregnancy? Sperm? Fertilization!!?

I don’t know what you all are teaching your kids, but mine still thinks that there’s a STORK who brings the baby.

Well, not really.

But basically.

ANYWAY...

Closest guess goes to Wendy, who guessed NO SPITTING and most creative guess goes to Julia for “Take off your necktie.” 

(Does ANYONE’S daddy still wear a necktie?)

And finally, here’s the answer that you’ve all been waiting for… 

(You see it now, don’t you?)

Sign says…

Tonight CJ decides to plaster the back door with SIGNS for daddy to see upon his return from work.

(click here for the answer!)

Sorry Jay, but the fact is, THESE ARE THE RULES!!!

Everything I need is right here in front of me

I try my hardest not to knock down the old lady ahead of me but the truth of the matter is that she is just so slow and I am on a mission to get to the baggage claim where my dear little family is waiting for me.

I squeak by her with nary a bump and race down the escalator.  Almost there!

The baggage area is noisy and crowded with people.  As I make my way towards carousel 5, I crane my neck for a glimpse of my dearly beloved.  Then, from across the room, I see him, and he sees me.

CJ’s face lights up and he hurls himself towards me.  Before I know it, his little arms are firmly wrapped around my kneck. 

“Mommy!” he whispers into my hair.

I am home.

Jay takes my bag and I carry CJ, who clings to me like a burr.  His 57 pounds feel like nothing at all.

We pull my suitcase off the carousel and Jay takes my laptop bag.  CJ insists on pulling my suitcase, which I happen to know is JUST as heavy as he is.  It’s cumbersome and awkward but HE WILL CARRY MOMMY’S BAG and so he does all the way to the car.

As I walk, Jay and CJ beside me toting my bags, I know with certainty that I am the luckiest woman in the whole wide world.

The Lasagna Incident

It’s incredible how much STUFF you need when you travel with a baby, I think, as we stand in line for security with our stuff piled around us.

Stroller? Check.

Car seat? Check.

Bag full of baby stuff? Check.

Pack ‘n’ play? Check.

We have so many essential baby items that Jay and I have had to squeeze all our things into one bag lest we be over the baggage limit of 2 per person.

We’re on our way to Kauai with my brother and sister in law. I’m nervous but excited about a week on the tropics with my 6 month old. We’ve traveled with him before, and so (we think) are basically experts.

It took some work, but I’ve orchestrated CJ’s sleep and feeding schedule precisely so that will eat when the plane takes off (sucking on a bottle keeps the pressure from building up in his tiny ears), and then fall asleep and hopefully sleep most of the flight.

We board the plane first because we can and we haven’t yet figured out that MORE time on the airplane with the baby is NOT A BONUS.

CJ snuggles into my arms and happily sucks his bottle. I stroke his downy head and elbow my sister-in-law, Melanie. “See,” I say, “like a charm!”

Melanie nods and reaches into her bag for the latest People magazine and we settle in. Behind us, Jay and his brother are discussing what we’ll do when we land.

The plane takes off and, just like magic, CJ finishes his bottle and falls asleep. He is lying face-up across my lap, his mouth open. A teeny-tiny line of drool makes its way from the corner of his mouth. From this angle, his eyelashes are impossibly long. Is there anything more intoxicating than a sleeping baby?

I breathe a contented sigh and lean back in my seat, turning my head to gaze out at the blue sky.

Might as well get comfortable. He should sleep for at least 2 hours.

There are a lot of rules in life. But the one that I’m intimately familiar with is this: a perfectly smooth road can only mean there’s bridge out just around the corner. Or a traffic jam. Or a land mine. Or a pack of no-good sorts waiting to ambush you. The specifics may vary, but the overall theme is always the same.

If things seem to be going just a little too well, be afraid, be very afraid.

Not twenty minutes have gone by and the flight staff is coming through the airplane with lunch. It’s lasagna, which I’m actually looking forward to because how can you mess up lasagna?

The flight attendant, a middle-aged women with bleached-out hair and a smoker’s voice, reaches across to hand Melanie her piping hot dish of foil-covered lasagna. She’s turned, talking to the other flight attendant, and somehow managed to lose her grip on the food.

As if in slow motion, I watch it fall through the air to land foil-side-down on CJ’s face.

AYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

He wakes up with a bellow of rage.

“OH MY GOODNESS!” I shout out, grabbing the lasagna off my baby’s face where it leaves an angry red rectangle-shaped mark.

The flight attendant jumps back in surprise. Then she grabs the lasagna out of my hand.

“He’s FINE,” she says brusquely, “it’s not that hot. I’m sure he’s just surprised.”

I look down at the red mark on my screaming baby’s face. This is more than “surprise.” But any reply is lost in my urgent attempts to calm him down.

Without as much as a SO SORRY I BURNED YOUR BABY, the flight attendants hurriedly push the food cart away from us down the aisle.

I desperately rock CJ back and forth, but he refuses to be comforted.

Being rudely awakened by a burning slap on the cheek is NOT something he’s ok with. And he’s making sure we all know it.

Jay is shaking with rage. While I was scrambling to recover from the lasagna incident, he saw the flight attendant rolling her eyes at me. This did not please my dear husband, who is an otherwise peaceable man. His brother tries to calm him down because karate chopping, strangling, or otherwise accosting the flight attendant, as Jay so desperately wants to do, is not going to get us anywhere that we want to go.

CJ screams for half an hour, and then finally settles into an ongoing state of general fussiness, which lasts for the duration of our flight. He’s missed his nap, he’s tired, and he’s VERY unhappy.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, we hear the chime of the bells signaling that it’s almost time to land.

As the flight attendant comes through the cabin one last time, she stops by my seat where I’m bouncing CJ on my knee. “HOLD ON TO THAT BABY!” She admonishes me before hurrying on her way.

Because I DIDN’T know to hold onto my baby.

This from the woman who did such a great job of HOLDING ONTO the lasagna.

I’m tempted to run up the aisle and give her a piece of my mind. But I don’t. I’ll just say something to the airline representatives in the airport, I think.

But when we get off the airplane, we are greeted by the hot humid fragrant air of KAUAI. Spending an hour lodging a complaint is the furthest thing from my mind.

***
I really did intend to lodge a complaint. To call or write a letter upon our return home. But I never did. I often think about that flight, though.

I’ll never understand why the flight attendant felt the need to treat us so poorly after something that was clearly her mistake. Why she didn’t apologize. Maybe she was worried about a lawsuit. Maybe she was just an unhappy woman. I guess I’ll never know.

***
Do you have your own travel horror story? Write it up and add your link here (go here for the button code). I’ll keep it open through Sunday (27th) at midnight, PST. Or tune in next Monday for a whole new topic!